by Dave Norris, Heritage Golf Club Superintendant

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July Update

This is now my 4th season here at Heritage and I have never seen a July like the one we just had. Record rainfall and thankfully lower than normal temperatures have kept damage on the golf course to a minimum. The creek that runs through the golf course rose and never really receded fully until just last week. That caused most all of the drainage that flows to it to back up. The holes that drain into it (1, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, and 9) were a challenge to keep playable let alone passable with a golf cart.

Thankfully this past week brought us normal summer weather and we were able to get a tremendous amount of work done leading into the Heritage Cup. The entire golf course was mowed and manicured in 4 short days. We mowed 100 acres of rough twice, 30 acres of fairways 3 times, 6 acres of tees/approaches were hand mowed 4 times, bunkers were completely blown out, re-shaped, edged and smoothed over 3 days, fairways and tees were divoted repeatedly, yardage markers and irrigation heads were edged, and every tree, creek bank and fence line was trimmed as well. We also patched the pot holes in cart paths until we properly repair them in the fall.

The end of August will be greens and fairway aerification. We will use the first weeks of the month to trim trees and O.B./Hazard lines. Areas like the right side of 6 and 7 as well as the left of 15 have many overhanging limbs that need to be removed to keep a good line of sight. We will also be removing some of the smaller remaining dead Ash trees as we move around the course. Needless to say August will be very busy and I am hoping for better weather than July gave us.